Who pulls the strings?

For years, Jon Ronson had heard tell of a clandestine band of dizzyingly powerful politicans and industrialists who were said to be the real rulers of the world, making and breaking presidents, contriving wars. Surely they could not exist. Could he find them? The trail took him - and his newfound companion, an oddball Washington reporter who had made the quest his life's mission - to a luxury resort in Portugal . . .
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At the National Press Club on Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC, Big Jim Tucker left a coded message on the answer-machine of a friend. "Mother. Your dutiful son is playing kick the can on Pennsylvania Avenue, Tuesday morning, 10.30am, thank you."

Big Jim replaced the telephone receiver. He lit a cigarette and glanced around the lobby with a routine vigilance. Even here at his club, his gentleman's club, he considered himself not entirely safe. Anyone could discover that this was where he had breakfast every day: three strong black coffees and some pastries on the side.

"If they ever got me," he said, "they'd make it look like a typical Washington mugging. A mugging on the sidewalk. Killed for a couple of dollars. Another three paragraphs in the newspaper."

Jim paused. He pulled on his cigarette. His heart is not strong due to his habit of smoking unfiltered Camels at all times, pack after pack. He is quite huge, an elderly southern gentleman in a crumpled suit and a newshound trilby. He has a voice like gravel (a result of cigarette-induced emphysema, which, by a happy accident, gives his speech an enigmatic rhythm, like a charismatic Sam Spade down on his luck) and an office downtown with Venetian blinds.

He said, "The thing is, we don't know how much time we've got left. And suppose I just so happen to 'drop dead' in my office on Tuesday afternoon. It could be the following Monday before someone says, 'Where is that boy?' I don't want to be burnt bacon when they find me. I guess I'm just too vain to be found that way."

Big Jim laughed in a hollow manner. "So I phone my friend every day just to announce I'm still kicking the can and still hunting the macaroon. Still breathing, see? The day she doesn't get that call is the day she makes enquiries."

Here at his private members' club, Big Jim could pass for a venerable commentator for a heavyweight daily newspaper, but he isn't. He works for an underground journal called the Spotlight. Mainstream journalists keep away from him. This is, Jim said, because certain high-ranking members of the overground media, even some members of his own club, are in league with the secret rulers of the world. And it is they who would make his death look like a typical Washington mugging.

When I began hearing about the Bilderberg Group - about the notion that a tiny band of insidious and clandestine powermongers meet in a secret room from which they rule the world - I was sceptical. But I kept hearing about them, and I finally decided to try to settle the matter once and for all. Which is why I visited Big Jim Tucker. Within anti-Bilderberg circles, Big Jim is considered a pioneer, a trailblazer, risking his life to attempt to locate the geographical whereabouts of the secret room.

"They exist all right," said Big Jim, "and they're not playing pinochle in there." Big Jim Tucker has spent 30 years documenting the facts. He's been after them since the 70s when he first got the hunch that they existed. He abandoned a good career in sports journalism on a big city paper. It has been cat and mouse ever since, he said. Good against evil.

"Those sick luminaries are always on the move," said Jim. "They never come together in the same place twice, so as to evade detection. They only meet once a year, for a long weekend in May or June."

They have been ruling the world in secret since 1954, Jim said, when a man called Joseph Retinger, whose name rarely appears in the history books, decided to create them. One of many mysteries is how Retinger - a Polish immigrant employed as secretary to the novelist Joseph Conrad - had the wherewithal and the contacts to organise such a mighty endeavour. Their first meeting took place in the Bilderberg Hotel, Holland, which is why the secret rulers of the world go by the name of the Bilderberg Group. Big Jim said that I happened to have caught him at a very good time. He was ready to take things further, to turn up the heat and cause some trouble.

"So you've actually managed to obtain the address of the next Bilderberg meeting?" I asked Jim.

"Yes, sir," he said.

"You know exactly where it is?" I asked.

"Yes, I do," he said.

Big Jim said he fully intended to thwart their security and barge in unannounced to catch them red-handed going about their covert wickedness. I was welcome to tag along, he said, "Just so long as you don't step on twigs or fall off walls while we're on the prowl.

"The plan is this," said Jim. "We'll leave Washington on the last day of May, and we'll arrive at the target destination on the Sunday morning. We'll start patrolling that same afternoon. Patrol Sunday and Monday. Develop sources. Waiters, chambermaids . . ."

"So they still meet in hotels?" I said.

"Yes, sir," said Jim. "The chambermaids will be gun-shy at first. They'll know something big and spooky is going on, but they won't know what. But then they'll begin to realise that whatever's happening at their hotel is evil. And that's when they'll open up."

"So what else will we do on the Sunday and Monday?"

"Scout around the resort. Figure out ways to penetrate."

"Scout around looking for what?"

"Where the short wall is," said Jim. "Where the big drainpipe is."

"So we'll actually be climbing up drainpipes?" I asked.

"Climbing up drainpipes," said Jim, "trying not to sneeze or cough or step on twigs. Trying to avoid the guard dogs."

"What's the name of the hotel?"

"I've - uh - got it written down here somewhere," said Jim. He riffled through his pockets. "Here it is. The Caesar Park golfing resort, Sintra, Portugal."

I looked quizzically at Jim. "Are you sure about all of this?"

"They are evil and their evil occurs in the dark shadows," replied Jim, emphatically. "Behind closed doors. Ruling the world from a room. Imagine that. Let's get a drink."

Jim took me to the Men's Bar upstairs. We drank beers and watched sport on the TV above the bar. Framed front pages of big news stories of days gone by lined the walls. "War in the Persian Gulf!" "Thatcher Resigns!" Jim said that both acts were orchestrated by Bilderberg. "Margaret Thatcher is one of the good guys," said Jim. "Bilderberg ordered her to dismantle British sovereignty, but she said no way, so they had her sacked."

Big Jim said he once found himself at a drinks party with Thatcher and he took the opportunity to sidle up to her. "How does it feel to have been denounced by those Bilderberg boys, ma'am?" he growled. She whispered back that she considered it a "great tribute to be denounced by Bilderberg".

I considered the significance of the endeavour we were about to undertake. For the other people I had met, Bilderberg was an inviolable almighty. Big Jim was the first man to have the tenacity to discover the address, and to plan on going in, and damn the consequences. This might change everything. Jim wouldn't tell me how he discovered the room's whereabouts, but a few moments later, as we sat at the bar, a tall man with a moustache bounded over and cheerfully introduced himself to me as Jim's mole from inside Bilderberg.

"I'm an accountant," he explained. "Some very big clients use our firm. One guy happened to mention to me that he was on his way to somewhere near Lisbon in June for a very private meeting."

Jim appeared a little annoyed by his mole's instantaneous candour, but then he shrugged and joined in with the story. "We know," said Jim, "that the Bilderberg Group always meet in May or June."

"So Jim," said the mole, "started telephoning every five-star hotel near Lisbon."

Jim picked up on my subtext at once. "Believe me," he said, "they're not there to play golf. They're too busy starting wars."

"They may play golf when they're there," clarified the mole, "but they're not there to play golf."

"Okay," I said.

"So," said Jim, "I finally got around to calling a hotel up in the hills, and I said to the receptionist, 'I've been invited to the Bilderberg conference in June, but I'm afraid I've been very silly and lost my invitation. Could you confirm that this is the correct venue?' And she said, 'Why, of course, sir. Oh yes, sir. This is exactly where you're supposed to be, and we're very much looking forward to serving you.' "

Jim and his mole laughed. A nearby barfly heard their laughter and came over to join us. Jim and his mole stopped laughing. They turned their backs on the new guy and myself. There was a moment's awkwardness.

"So what's all this about?" asked the new guy.

"Well," I whispered, "that big old man in the trilby has tracked down the tiny group of people who rule the world in secret. Anyway, the two of us are going to Portugal next week to confront them."

"Oh, right," he said, unimpressed. "What do they do, these secret rulers of the world?"

I shrugged. "Everything, I guess," I said. "They're called the Bilderberg Group."

"Can't say I've heard of them," he said.

"Jim's dedicated his life to exposing them," I said.

"It's not so surprising that I've never heard of them," said the new guy. He scanned the room. Every bar stool was occupied. Retired newsmen in suits stared into their beer glasses. The Men's Bar seemed to be where the Washington press corps went when there were no more deadlines, no stories left to file. "It's not so surprising," he said. "Pretty much everyone here has dedicated his life to something or other that nobody's ever heard of."

The next morning, Jim took me to the office of the Spotlight, just around the corner from Capitol Hill. It is pristine from the outside, gleaming white, on a lovely tree-lined street. But it is dark and dusty inside, and there are boxes everywhere. He introduced me to Andy, his editor. We sat in the courtyard and drank iced tea. "Jon," said Jim to Andy, "thinks those Bilderberg boys are just playing pinochle in there."

"Well, first off," said Andy, impatiently, "you get a lot of people, including newspaper editors, who say there is no Bilderberg Group, that it doesn't even exist."

"They've kept the vow of silence like they're going to nun school," said Jim.

"This is after you've had Prince Charles attend," said Andy. "This is after you've had Bill Clinton attend. And still people say it doesn't exist. Not that it's just a social meeting, but that it doesn't exist."

"If they're just going to play golf and swap lies and chase girls," said Jim, "why the armed guards? Know what I'm saying?"

"They exist all right," said Andy.

"Prince Charles and Bill Clinton," explained Jim, "are small-fry. The rulers of the world are the ones who do the inviting. The steering committee. Clinton was just a small-fry from somewhere called Arkansas when he got his invitation back in '91. Yeah, they had big plans for that boy."

"You be careful," said Andy. "You're dealing with dangerous forces."

***

"Mother," said Big Jim Tucker, "your dutiful son is playing hunt the macaroon at the Paris Hotel, Portugal, Monday morning, 10.30am, thank you."

It was a week later, and our first working day in Portugal. Our plan was to scout the target five-star golfing resort situated six miles north, develop sources and look for the short wall and the big drainpipe in preparation for the midnight penetration later in the week. Jim lay back on his bed. Our hotel was built on a busy roundabout. The ocean glistened in the distance, beyond a railway track and a couple of main roads. Even up here on the sixth floor you could hear the never-ending roar of the traffic.

"Unlike the Bilderberg luminaries," said Jim, ruefully, scanning the dirty walls of this bad hotel, "some of us are working on a tight budget." Jim lit a Camel. He is a large, elderly man, and I am not athletic. Our agility levels were impeded by our smoking habits, and we wheezed in the Portuguese heat. I was unsure as to how successful the two of us would be in climbing up drainpipes. I pictured slapstick scenarios that would be hilarious to onlookers but not to us.

Jim was acting breezily, but I could sense his nervousness. "I'm a quarterback," he said, "gearing up for the Superbowl."

By Jim's reckoning, the Bilderberg Group was not scheduled to arrive in Portugal until Wednesday night. He said he had heard reports that their private security guards had already set up camp at the Caesar Park and were planning to operate a shoot-to-kill policy for all penetrators. This somewhat diminished the potential for slapstick hilarity. I was not feeling cocksure.

We had that morning fruitlessly scanned the news-stands for references to the meeting. "Surprise, surprise," growled Jim. "Media black-out."

There was, however, one notable exception. The Weekly News, a tiny English-language parish newspaper, circulation 8,000, for Algarve tourist workers and regular English visitors such as Sir Cliff Richard, had gone big on the story. Very big: "As speculation on the internet runs rife, the News checks it out and it does seem that . . . secret world government group is meeting here!"

The Weekly News made me feel less vulnerable down here on the ground. Jim said he wanted to touch base with its editorial team later in the week. "If the Weekly News boys can help us expose those Bilderberg jackasses," he said, "I'm all for pooling information."

I had rented a car from Budget. We drove into the mountains, away from the boisterous, good-time package-tour Estoril, towards the more serene and ancient pastures of Sintra, seven miles up the road. On the way, we discussed cover stories in case we incurred suspicion. We elected to be holidaymakers, getting a drink at the poolside bar because we'd heard so many good things about the resort, which was undoubtedly the finest around.

The Caesar Park is situated three miles from the main Estoril-Sintra road - two and a half miles down a narrow country lane, through the wilderness of a national park, followed by another half-mile private driveway. It became evident, as we approached the big peach gates that led into the resort, that the midnight penetration would be an even more formidable task than we had anticipated. The hotel is surrounded on all sides by dense undergrowth and sheer mountains. Jim silently pondered these obstacles from the passenger seat. He photographed the mountains. We drove through the gates (the gatekeeper let us in with a wave) and down the half-mile-long driveway. And then the hotel appeared - a peach-coloured resort of purpose-built luxury.

"The civilians haven't been shifted out yet," muttered Jim, as we left the car and wandered towards the colossal marble reception area. Jim whipped out his camera and photographed the tourists. These photographs would later appear in the Spotlight as "unaware civilians".

We were not inconspicuous, Jim and I, strolling around the Caesar Park in our open-necked shirts. We were, in fact, an unlikely holidaymaking duo. At a very big push, Jim could resemble a benevolent, wealthy, southern sugar daddy and I his gawky, early-30s toy-boy. But I doubted the persuasiveness of the scenario. "I don't think," I murmured, as we wandered out to the swimming pool, "that the holidaymaking cover is a convincing one. I think we should think of something else."

"We're salesmen," said Jim. "We're just salesmen getting lunch."

"What do we sell?" I asked.

"We don't like to talk business when we're having lunch," said Jim.

We sat on stools at the poolside bar. Unaware young women sunbathed in bikinis.

"Ma'am," said Jim to a young passing waitress, bowing slightly, his newshound trilby now replaced by a tourist's straw sunhat, "I'm a little confused. I tried to book a room here for Thursday, and they told me that the whole hotel had been closed down for some big meeting. Must be a pretty damned big important meeting if you ask me . . ."

The waitress shrugged. "I don't know," she said. She smiled slightly and left us.

Jim got out his notepad. He wrote notes and then he read them out to me:

Dateline Portugal

Tension filled the air inside the posh Caesar Park resort on Monday. At the poolside bar, the pretty barmaid's face filled with tension when asked to speculate on the big important meeting taking place from Thursday. She shrugged her shoulders and feigned ignorance, but the tension on her face spoke volumes.

Jim put down his notepad. "Is that accurate?" he said.

"I don't know," I said."We may be imbuing her with our own feelings of tension."

"Still," said Jim, finishing his iced tea, "now we know what the drinks of the rich taste like."

We paid and patrolled the resort some more. I was disappointed with the Caesar Park, its Eurotrashy aircraft-hangar spaces, its cold approximation of luxury. The lobby shops have names such as "Fashionable". I would have assumed that Bilderberg would meet somewhere classier. Jim explained that I still hadn't quite got it. They are not there for classy holidaying. They are there to start wars. Also, Jim added, there is a finite number of international hotels that can transform themselves into walled fortresses, that have their own helicopter pads and nearby military air bases.

Jim and I split up. I looked at the prints on the wall outside the upstairs bar. A half-hour passed. I wandered aimlessly through the lobbies and the bars. There were other aimless wanderers, too: a woman in a red dress and a man in his 30s wearing a tweed jacket. It struck me that we all seemed to be wandering aimlessly in some kind of unison, but it didn't cross my mind - right up until the moment that the man in the tweed jacket marched across the room and began questioning me in an angry whisper - that I was being tailed.

"We've watched you for an hour. I'm the hotel manager. You take pictures. You ask questions about some big important meeting. Who are you?"

"I . . ." I paused. Then I clumsily announced, "I'm from England." It was the only thing I could think of. This works, of course, in other circumstances abroad. But it didn't work here.

"What do you want?"

I stared blankly at him.

"What is your business here?"

I continued to stare blankly. And then another man appeared. This new man was older, with a tan, and he spoke with a smooth European accent. "It's okay!" he laughed. "Everything's fine! There's no problem!" He gave the hotel manager's shoulder a little squeeze. "I am your servant," he said to me. "If there's anything you'd like, please be my guest. Think of this hotel as your home. If I can be of any service to you, any service whatsoever, don't hesitate to ask."

I glanced over with anxiety at the hotel manager, who was now standing a little way off; overruled, slighted and silent. "I mean," he smiled, "what could you possibly be doing here that could cause any harm to anybody?"

"Are you . . ." I paused. There was something indistinctly alarming about the things he was saying to me. I could not imagine that he really did want me to think of this hotel as my home. So why did he say that? I presume, in retrospect, that the message he was sending to me was: "We have noticed you, you are not welcome, but we are allowing you to leave without incident, just so long as you don't come back." At the time, however, the message I picked up was: "I am extremely sinister and powerful. This is so evident that I can afford to feign generous subservience."

"Are you with the Caesar Park?" I asked the charming man.

"Oh, no," he laughed. "No, I am not with the hotel. So, as I say, think of this hotel as your home. Really, everything's fine and there's no problem. What problems could there be?"

What problems could there be? I wanted the young hotel manager to intervene. I suddenly felt that he could be my ally in this situation. But he remained impassive.

"Don't feel as if you have to go," said the charming man, his arms outstretched. "Stay as long as you like. Enjoy the facilities. Have a swim!"

"So if you're not with the hotel," I said, "who are you with?"

"I am with . . ." he paused ". . . another organisation."

"Which is called . . .?"

He laughed and looked at the ground. "Enjoy your afternoon," he said.

I waited for Jim down in the lobby, right by the revolving doors that led outside to the car park. The hotel manager stood nearby, watching me with a constant, even gaze. After five minutes, Jim ambled towards us. When he noticed the hotel manager, he slowed his gait to the laziest of strolls - a little gesture of southern gentlemanly defiance.

There was something new in the car park now, a dozen police motorcycles lined up by the revolving doors. "The big shut-down is beginning," whispered Jim. He pulled out his camera and photographed the police. "We're lucky," he said. "An hour later, we wouldn't have gotten near the place."

"What did that man say to you?" I asked.

"Oh," said Jim, "he would just love to be of service and provide any help I needed, blah blah blah."

"Those Bilderberg boys can be pretty sinister," said Jim. We climbed into our car. I started the engine.

"So I told him that I didn't need any help wandering around the hotel, thank you all the same," said Jim. "Then he asked where we were staying . . ."

"Did he?"

"And I said, 'Oh, just some flea-pit down the road.'"

***

That evening, when I went for dinner, I put a sliver of paper in the crack between my hotel room door and the frame, as I had seen James Coburn do in Our Man Flint. Actually, Coburn put a single hair in his door. But my door crack was too large for single hairs, and they kept falling on to the floor and disappearing into the carpet. I was standing there in the corridor tugging my hair out. So I switched to a sliver of paper. When I returned from dinner, the sliver was still there. There was always a possibility, of course, that they'd taken a look around and put the sliver back where they'd found it. I slept fitfully that night, but nothing happened.

"Mother." It was Tuesday morning. Jim was leaving his regular answerphone message with his friend back in Washington DC to confirm he had not been murdered during the previous 24 hours. "Your dutiful son is playing kick the can in Portugal. Thank you very much." This was supposed to be an easy day. Jim simply wanted to verify that the complete shut-down of the Caesar Park had been accomplished. We would drive up there and be turned away at the gate. Jim would ask why, for the record, and document the response in his notepad. Then we would turn around and drive back to our hotel for a leisurely afternoon by the pool and in the bar.

But this was not to be. We arrived at the Caesar Park to discover no police, no cordon, no shut-down. The gatekeeper lifted the barrier and waved us on with a cheerful smile. For the first time, Jim appeared sidestepped. "That's surprising," he admitted. "That's surprising already."

"Do we drive in?"

"I'm confounded," murmured Jim. "We saw the shut-down begin yesterday. We saw it with our own eyes. And now no shut-down. This is not what's supposed to happen."

The gatekeeper approached the car. "Just drive in," said Jim urgently. Impulsively, I took my foot off the brake and we cruised up the drive. This was a disconcerting new twist. We were venturing into a place where it had been made perfectly clear that we were not welcome, and we didn't even want to be there. We were accidental agents provocateurs, simply because we had been waved on at the gate.

"The hotel is deserted," I said, as we pulled into the car park. "We're the only people here."

"Let's get lunch," said Jim. "Just two guys getting lunch."

We wandered through the now-deserted marble lobby. There were no more civilians. We walked out into the silent grounds and sat at the poolside bar, the only two customers in a hotel designed for thousands. A young waitress appeared.

"Ma'am," said Jim, raising his trilby.

"Sir?" she said.

"What time do you get off work?"

The question seemed to startle her.

"Nine o'clock," she said, cautiously.

"And what bars do you like drinking in?" said Jim.

"There are some nice bars in the village near the cathedral."

"Any bars in particular?" Jim laughed. "Don't worry. I'm buying."

"Just lots of nice bars in the village," she said, evenly.

"That's good information," said Jim. "Thank you, ma'am," he called after her.

He turned to me. "Now we know where the waiting staff drink. Could be good contacts."

"So," I said, "shall we try the bars near the cathedral?"

"Sure," he said.

"Will we go, then?"

"Okay," said Jim.

We walked back to the car and began driving the half-mile towards the exit. I glanced into my rear-view mirror. A dark green Lancia had pulled out behind us.

"Jim," I said.

"Mmm?"

"I think we're being followed."

Jim turned around. "No shit," he grinned. "Don't worry. Once we're on the public highway, they'd be pretty foolish to try anything."

"Okay," I said.

"They're not going to want to have a fat old dead reporter on the side of the road," said Jim. "That's too big a news story."

"Okay," I said.

"But here they could say, 'Oh, we thought they were armed. They looked threatening. We told them to stop but they didn't stop.' Bango!"

"I get the picture," I said.

A flock of geese wandered idly up the drive in front of me. I honked my horn. We finally reached the peach gates.

But the Lancia didn't turn around. It began to follow us down the deserted lane.

"Uh oh," said Jim.

***

"British Embassy."

"Okay," I said, "I'm a journalist from London. I'm calling you on the road from Sintra to Estoril . . ."

"Hold on."

"Press office."

"I'm a journalist from London," I said. "I'm calling you on the road from Sintra to Estoril. I'm being tailed, right now, by a dark green Lancia belonging to the Bilderberg Group."

There was a sharp intake of breath. "Go on," she said.

"I'm sorry," I said, "but I just heard you take a sharp breath."

"Bilderberg?" she said.

"Yes," I said. "They watched us scouting around the Caesar Park Hotel and they've been following us ever since. We have now been followed for three hours. I wasn't sure at first, so I stopped my car on the side of a deserted lane and he stopped his car right in front of us. Can you imagine just how chilling that moment was? This is especially disconcerting because I'm from England and I'm not used to being spied on."

"Do you have Bilderberg's permission to be in Portugal?" she said. "Do they know you are here?"

"No," I said.

"Bilderberg are very secretive," she said. "They don't want people looking into their business. What are you doing here?"

"I am essentially a humorous journalist," I explained. "I am a humorous journalist out of my depth. Do you think it might help if we tell them that?"

From the corner of my eye, I saw Jim wind down his window. He leant his head out and blew an antagonising lady-like kiss at the Lancia.

"Hold on a second," I said. "Jim!" I said, sternly. "Please stop that." I lowered my voice. "I'm here with an American," I said, "called Big Jim Tucker. He's an agent provocateur. That might be the problem. Perhaps you can phone Bilderberg and explain that I may be in the car with Jim Tucker, but I'm not actually with him."

"Listen"' she said, urgently, "Bilderberg is much bigger than we are. We're very small. We're just a little embassy. Do you understand? They're way out of our league. All I can say is go back to your hotel and sit tight."

"I'm actually just pulling into our hotel car park right now. The Paris Hotel in Estoril. He's right behind me. He's pulling up on the street right next to the hotel. He's getting out of his car . . ." "Sit tight," she said. "I'll make some phone calls. Whatever happens, don't incite them in any way. Don't fan the flames."

Before the chase had begun, Jim was lumbering and supine. Now he jumped out of the car with the agility of a young deer. The man from the Lancia climbed out of his car and took up a position behind a tree. He was young, in his 30s, with short black hair. He wore sunglasses and a dark green suit.

But everything was beyond my control. It was as if the invigoration of the chase had transformed Jim into a sprightly teenager.

A one-sided game of peek-a-boo ensued, during which the chaser maintained a steely expression behind his sunglasses, Jim performed a little ballet dance, and I sidled towards the swimming-pool area, attempting to distance myself from the unfolding crisis. Jim wandered over to me.

"Am I being paranoid," he said, "or did Bilderberg set a trap for us? No, listen. Yesterday, we saw the shut-down begin. We saw it with our own eyes. Today, surprise surprise, no shut-down. They let us in with a smile . . ." Jim trailed off.